New Critique Policy

[Shaun]

Below is our new policy regarding poor critiques (essentially those one-liners or "gee gosh golly wow" critiques that don't do much). This policy is not a stiff policy, and by that I mean there is some leeway in regards to certain aspects of it. It's flexible, basically. So here it is:

New Policy for Poor Critiques
--After first deletion a person receives a friendly warning, one that basically says "critique better please".

--After second deletion there is an official warning. At this point if the person just doesn't understand we can cut a little slack. We get really young folks here, so maybe pointing them to a good example of a critique might help here.

--After the third deletion there is a temporary ban from the literature forums for a period of 30 days. If the person has flooded the forum at any point, we go straight to temp ban, so if we don't catch them from the start, we just jump to this step, unless there is clearly just a misunderstanding. All their work will be deleted as well if they have been abusing it to get their work up, including the critiques given. And no, they won't get those critiques back from us...they're frak out of luck on that. You abuse the system, you get punished for it.

--Continued abuse, with absolutely no change in action results in permanent ban.
Again, if someone has come in and just flooded the lit forums (as I see someone has) with frakking useless critiques, we can jump to this point. This needs to be decided by at least Andy or Myself. Zombie and George can't make this call (sorry guys, but it's sort of a big decision to permanently ban someone who isn't posting porn).

Essentially this policy is to provide us (the mods) with the authority to make decisions regarding how to treat poor critiques, as there hasn't been a very clear policy on it. Part of the problem is that some people have come here to abuse our critique system, which isn't perfect. We'd like to stop that. It's not fair to those of you who give them good critiques and receive nothing in return.

So, if you have questions or concerns, please voice them here.

Thanks!

[Shaun]

That's why there's flexibility. Not to mention, the folks that flood the boards and post a piece are almost always people that do that once and then never come back...

[Nyx]

I like it. Nice move ^^

[Ichigo]

So if you don't really have anything constructive to say and you just want to brighten their day you...PM them?

[Shaun]

Well, we figure there's going to be significant flexibility for regular, active members such as yourself. You do real critiques, and a lot of them. So if every so often you just want to go "hey, good work" we're not going to go "oh my gosh, ban ban ban". But if all you do is that, then yeah, this policy will be used. If you do real critiques and are active and a good member, you have absolutely NOTHING to be concerned about regarding this policy. This is primarily to deal with people who intentionally come here only to manipulate the system, get free crits, and then disappear. We want people to stick around, to be active and provide constructive criticism.

So, don't worry Ichi, we're not going to ban you :P